jorgecoffie

This is my self-reflection of the minor Cultural Diversity.

So there I was again, standing in the Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam. I remember being here before for completely different reasons than those of that moment. Memories of late night saoto soup and drunk break up fights near my old stomping ground, Gay Palace, keep coming up the closer I get to where I need to be. There is where I suddenly see Maud again, standing in front of the door of TENT. To be honest, I felt like I was going back to a familiar space. No, not TENT, but the space that the minor Cultural Diversity was able to create. I was craving knowledge, almost as much as I was craving a sense of adventure. I couldn’t wait to go out on the streets and feeling like I was going to do something that could change the way people see so-called problems within communities.

Then came the first few weeks where I was able to tell my own migration story. I was excited! Couldn’t believe how rewarding it felt to think about my own path. I’ve always thought about my parent’s migration story, it was pretty much defined who I was. But my own story, who and what did I leave behind and how do I (or actually don’t) deal with this. Out of this feeling I created the video of “Maria, Por Siempre”. Finally, me and Maud are together again to work on our next big project for the minor.
We felt like we could do this without any trouble. Like the experience we had before with Gewoon Delfshaven had reinforced the success of the next one. Not in the way of feeling overconfident, but because we believed in each others strengths and thought we knew one another like nobody else. Blinded by our friendship? Maybe.

We thought we were going to question this assignment. Why are we doing what is being asked to do. It didn’t feel right, but weren’t really sure why. It was kind of expected I think, looking back at how we felt with the project of Gewoon Delfshaven, for us to even question the space we were given. We kept seeing and reading a lot of discussion about representation in the white space. We quickly came to the idea of creating a platform called The Spectacle where we could represent others who shared our same vision of diversity within the museum and would want to discuss more about it. “Let’s build an army!”, we thought jokingly. But it was shortly after this that we felt after the presentation of the concept that we had more questions than answers. We were even confronted with the question of us being aware of our bodies and how they speak. What does this mean, I thought. I wasn’t really saying what I wanted to say. Next step was to get more knowledge and so that we could confront this space with a stronger understanding. Hence us reading ‘The poetics and politics of exhibiting other cultures’ by Stuart Hall.
We then presented ourselves again, but now discussing more about we just had read. Were we suppose to have different opinions? Were we supposed to not be on the same page? I thought we were here together, representing a problem outside of us, outside of who we are but connected to our shared vision that the art institutions were doing something we didn’t feel was right. At this point, we were challenged to confront each other with our bodies. For the first time since the first time in two years, Maud and I turned into Maud a white young woman from Limburg and Jorge a black young queer man from Curaçao. It felt like we missed a step. What went wrong?

Again I didn’t feel comfortable. Again my body is being used when I really did not want to. Realizing very quickly that I have no control of what my body does.
During this period, I was confronted with others of the group that had realized that I may have more things in common with when it comes to past experiences with being discriminated or judged based by my body, my ethnicity. At the time I felt a bit uncomfortable, floating between feeling recognized and still not really connected. With comments like, oh it’s funny, we assumed you’ve experienced these things but still didn’t really talk to you earlier. What was I suppose to feel now? We’ve talked also a little while after this first encounter, where we’ve talked about the past, about school and about my relationship with Maud. Looking back, I feel like I was again being confronted about my body, but this time I was being asked to question if I was aware of the fact that my body was the opposite of what Maud represented.

All this on top of each other led to a frustration and outbreak between me and myself and later with Maud. Am I black enough? Am I black enough to be included in the storyline of the white space and the institutions? Am I even black enough for the black community? I never felt more out of place and feeling like I didn’t know where I belonged. Not as a person nor as a designer.

Moving forward with the project I felt like I had to talk to others about this. I tried having conversations with family members and friends about their past experiences with the body they’re in. One of my sisters, the oldest, also lives here in The Netherlands. She came to live here 7 years before I came. We’ve never really spoken about how she felt about her ethnicity and how people have treated her because of the way she looks. In our family, we grew up with a very strict latino/afro Caribbean upbringing. Obey your parents, never ask why. Race was a subject we touched only when it came to speaking about our latino side. It wasn’t necessarily a good things to say to people you’re Dominican. No, say you’re from anywhere, except from the Dominican Republic, they think we’re all prostitutes or home wreckers. On the other hand, my dad used to tell me how to think and behave when it comes to the white Dutch men. Never talk back, or fight or do anything that might get you in trouble. Say everything they want you to think and be very patient, because these are people who are not to be messed with. I didn’t really understand why he was saying these things to me. I didn’t see a lot of white Dutch people where I grew up. Not at school, nor in my neighborhood. So my first genuine experience with the white Dutch body was when I made the conscious choice to leave everybody behind and move to the Netherlands.

I’ve been here for a long time, same as most of my friends who also came here to study. Living here, the things my dad had told me many years before seemed to have sink back in my mind, not really aware of it but felt like this is the way things are. It sometimes became stronger when I was told by others that I have to change and lose the ways of the island in order to adapt to the Dutch ways. Make sure you’re always on time and perform at double of your capabilities so that they can’t say anything bad about you, they already think we’re bad enough as it is. This is how someone like me should behave in this new country. I still feel like I’m not a native here. I live here but I’m not a local. I’ve adapted myself enough to get through what I thought was assimilating.

Honestly, I believe that this way of thinking was what sometimes kept me from ever speaking up for myself and from what I was feeling.

I’ve had harder conversations after this with my boyfriend. We’ve been together for 11 years, have two foster kids and it sometimes feels like these kinds of things were not really spoken about before. I saw an opportunity one night to try and start a conversation. And I was met with the response that I should not let my body determine my role in society. Prove them wrong, don’t make a victim out of yourself he said. He strongly believed the problem about race is to be solved by how we bring people up. But in the mean time we should perform beyond what other expect. How is this fair to me, and to others. How can I cope with this feeling and translate it into a design.

Maud and I made all these questions visible on pieces of papers. We finally confronted each other with what we never dared to say before. I was honest about my feelings. And she was being honest about hers. Only then we realized that what is happening between us is a reflection of how the world sees us and everybody else. Therefore we created a performance piece where we have four bodies speak our story for us. We chose to do this by having two sides, the white body opposite of the black. Their bodies literally speaking for themselves through statements placed on their clothing. I feel like this is a very effective way of saying what you want to say or weren’t able to say otherwise. During the performance they will have moments were they speak up and say more about what these statements are about. While this is happening, the lights in the space will be cut out. We wanted this to feel like how we felt, by only closing our eyes, turning our senses off, we will be able to say what we really wanted to say. My wish is that as a designer I could create an experience where I could reach in to the visitors inner self and make them question what they just heard. The same way we were confronted by our realization of our selves.

I think this project is relevant for this because it translates the struggles and dynamics of these relationships. Out the research that has been done, it was relevant to see how people with our bodies have been expressing themselves and were met with more understanding of how our backgrounds might be different but in this space being reflected against each other have the opportunity to gain more self-understanding.

The urgency for this project for the social practice is for the intention to create an awareness of a very personal story which will connect to others with the same bodies or shared experiences. For a long time, I felt like I had to be who they expect me to be, not like myself, but this other version I’ve never really met before. Again, I didn’t think too much of it because I was taught that this is the way. If it wasn’t for Cultural Diversity I wouldn’t have pushed myself out of this, and would’ve remained quiet. Maybe even forever. It fought hard with my past, with what my father had told me. I think this is something that is to be expected in the minor of Cultural Diversity.

For my graduation work I’d like to be able to continue with a search for these two seemingly polar opposite backgrounds of people. There is too much more left to be said. As a designer I want to feel the freedom of connecting my background to other and my work. I’ve looked at the work of Kerry James Marshall, James Baldwin and artists like Solange to inspire me to be more, me.